Consonant Types Research Articles

Indonesian Spelling Error Detection and Type Identification Using Bigram Vector and Minimum Edit Distance Based Probabilities

Spelling error has become an error that is often found in this era which can be seen from the use of words that tend to follow trends or culture, especially in the younger generation. This study aims to develop and test a detection and identification model using a combination of Bigram Vector and Minimum Edit Distance Based Probabilities. Correct words from error words are obtained using candidates search and probability calculations that adopt the concept of minimum edit distance. The detection results then identified the error type into three types of errors, namely vowels, consonants and diphthongs from the error side on the tendency of the characters used as a result of phonemic rendering at the time of writing. The results of error detection and identification of error types obtained are quite good where most of the error test data can be detected and identified according to the type of error, although there are several detection errors by obtaining more than one correct word as a result of the same probability value of these words.

Production and Perception of Geminate Consonants in English Words by Thai Learners of English: Implications for English Teaching and Learning

The present study aims to explore the production and perception of geminate consonants of Thai learners of English. This study seeks to answer three research questions. First, are there any significant differences in the production of different types of English geminate consonants among five groups of participants (four groups of non-native speakers of English and one group of native speakers of English)? Second, does the level of English proficiency of the English learners affect the production and perception of English geminate consonants? Third, do English orthographic forms affect the pronunciation of Thai learners of English? To answer these three questions, the researcher compared the performance of 90 students from three different levels of language proficiency (low intermediate, high intermediate, and advanced) and of 15 Thai university instructors with the performance of eight native speakers of English. The researcher examined the performance of the participants by using two tasks: reading aloud and dictation. Even though the statistical results showed a significant difference only in the production of lexical geminates between native and non-native English speakers, it should be noted that the students from the lower levels of language proficiency seemed to have greater difficulty in identifying English geminates in regular speech. Ultimately, the researcher would like to argue that teaching pronunciation is not just about teaching students how to produce the correct sounds. It is also about helping them to hear the sounds correctly, so that they can understand what they hear.

Characteristics of consonant among children with speech sound disorder

Objective: To investigate the characteristics of consonant among children with speech sound disorder (SSD) and to provide an empirical basis for the subsequent clinical evaluation and evidence-based intervention. Methods: In this retrospective research a total of 1 395 children diagnosed with SSD from the Language-Speech Clinic of the Department of Children Health Care, Children's Hospital, Capital Institute of Pediatrics from January 2007 to December 2018 were enrolled and underwent the phonological examination on the lexical level with picture naming, according to phoneme development in Chinese mandarin. The Chi-square trend test was applied to analyze the differences and trends of the proportion of consonant error subtypes in children of different age groups. The Chi-square test was conducted to compare the proportion of consonant error subtypes in different gender. Results: The 1 395 children diagnosed with SSD included 1 044 boys and 351 girls, with an age of (5.1±0.8) years. The occurrence of consonant errors in different locations of articulation was the highest for blade-alveolar /l/ (71.8%, 1 002/1 395) and the lowest for labial/b/(9.3%, 130/1 395). The occurrence of consonant errors of labial/p/f/, supra-dental/z/c/s/, blade-alveolar/t/l/, blade-palatal/ch/r/, velar/k/h/, and lingua-palatal/q/decreased with age (all P<0.05). The occurrence of consonant errors of labial/b/m/, supra-dental/z/c/, blade-alveolar/n/l/, blade-palatal/sh/, velar/h/, and lingua-palatal/x/were higher in boys than those in girls (10.3% (108/1 044) vs. 6.3% (22/351), 11.4% (119/1 044) vs. 6.0% (21/351), 64.8% (676/1 044) vs. 51.9% (182/351), 67.8% (708/1 044) vs. 59.8% (210/351), 16.7% (174/1 044) vs. 8.8% (31/351), 73.7% (769/1 044) vs. 66.1% (232/351), 58.0% (606/1 044) vs. 47.6% (167/351), 24.0% (251/1 044) vs. 14.2% (50/351), and 39.9% (417/1 044) vs. 27.6% (97/351); χ²=5.167, 8.533, 16.889, 7.447, 12.863, 7.412, 11.650, 14.900, and 17.099, all P<0.05). The error types of consonant were substitution, omission, and distortion. Omission was the main error type of blade-alveolar/l/(53.3%, 743/1 395), distortion was the main error type of velar/h/(11.8%, 165/1 395), and substitution was the main error type of all other consonants. Substitution with blade-palatal/ch/having the highest occurrence of error (60.2%, 840/1 395). Conclusions: The occurrence of the blade-alveolar/l/error is the highest in children with SSD, with boys demonstrating more serious articulation problems. The main error type of consonant is substitution, with blade-palatal/ch/having the highest occurrence of error. These results suggest the necessity of attending to preschoolers' articulation development. Phonological training targeting blade-alveolar/l/and blade-palatal/ch/should be carried out as early as possible.

Automatic detection of pharyngeal fricatives in cleft palate speech using acoustic features based on the vocal tract area spectrum

The pharyngeal fricative is a typical compensatory articulation disorder in cleft palate speech. It is produced by retracting the root of the tongue to the posterior pharyngeal wall to substitute for the fricatives and affricates produced in the oral cavity. People who use the pharyngeal fricative have difficulties in daily communication. Research on automatic pharyngeal fricative detection can provide aids in diagnosis for speech-language pathologists and clinical doctors. This work proposes a vocal tract area spectrum (VTAS) to represent a vocal tract model using time-varying cascaded pipes. Four acoustic features based on the VTAS (the centroid and spread (CS), peak linear deviation (PLD), relative-normal entropy (RNE), mean of the ratios’ statistics (MRS)) are proposed to evaluate the differences between pharyngeal fricatives and normal speech. The CS feature is proposed to evaluate the overall shape of the vocal tract to detect whether there are abnormal gestures or movements of the articulators in speech production. The PLD and RNE features focus on the variation and complexity of each vocal tube's area during the whole pronunciation process. The MRS feature is proposed to describe the continuity of the vocal tract. To evaluate the effectiveness of these four features, pharyngeal fricative detection experiments are conducted using a pharyngeal fricative dataset. This dataset contains 1246 speech samples spoken by 50 cleft palate patients and 50 normal speakers, covering all types of initial consonants in which the pharyngeal fricative usually occurs. The detection accuracy of the pharyngeal fricative using the CS, PLD, RNE and MRS feature ranges from 80.66% to 90.21%. When using the proposed CS+PLD+RNE+MRS feature, an accuracy of 95.18% can be achieved on the pharyngeal fricative dataset.

The Effectiveness of Unsupervised Subword Modeling With Autoregressive and Cross-Lingual Phone-Aware Networks

This study addresses unsupervised subword modeling, i.e., learning acoustic feature representations that can distinguish between subword units of a language. We propose a two-stage learning framework that combines self-supervised learning and cross-lingual knowledge transfer. The framework consists of autoregressive predictive coding (APC) as the front-end and a cross-lingual deep neural network (DNN) as the back-end. Experiments on the ABX subword discriminability task conducted with the Libri-light and ZeroSpeech 2017 databases showed that our approach is competitive or superior to state-of-the-art studies. Comprehensive and systematic analyses at the phoneme- and articulatory feature (AF)-level showed that our approach was better at capturing diphthong than monophthong vowel information, while also differences in the amount of information captured for different types of consonants were observed. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between the effectiveness of the back-end in capturing a phoneme's information and the quality of the cross-lingual phone labels assigned to the phoneme. The AF-level analysis together with t-SNE visualization results showed that the proposed approach is better than MFCC and APC features in capturing manner and place of articulation information, vowel height, and backness information. Taken together, the analyses showed that the two stages in our approach are both effective in capturing phoneme and AF information. Nevertheless, monophthong vowel information is less well captured than consonant information, which suggests that future research should focus on improving capturing monophthong vowel information.

Open and closed mid-front vowels in Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec

Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec is spoken in the community of Teotitlán del Valle, in the Central Valley of Oaxaca in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Teotitlán Zapotec is one of the Central Zapotec languages, which belong to the Zapotecan language family within the Otomanguean language stock. Teotitlán Zapotec has two mid-front vowels. The distribution of these two mid-front vowels is conditioned by the nature of the adjacent consonants and accent and presents challenges to formal analysis due to a number of properties predictive of the distribution: the disjunctive set of consonants conditioning the alternation, the ganging effect of consonant type and syllable structure as triggers, the featural characterization of the process as raising assimilation, and asymmetries between derived and non-derived environments in the observed patterns.

Visual and Proprioceptive Perceptions Evoke Motion-Sound Symbolism: Different Acceleration Profiles Are Associated With Different Types of Consonants.

A growing body of literature has shown that one perceptual modality can be systematically associated with sensation in another. However, the cross-modal relationship between linguistic sounds and motions (i.e., motion-sound symbolism) is an extremely understudied area of research. Against this background, this paper examines the cross-modal correspondences between categories of consonants on one hand and different acceleration profiles of motion stimuli on the other. In the two experiments that we conducted, we mechanically manipulated the acceleration profiles of the stimuli while holding the trajectory paths constant, thus distinguishing the effect of acceleration profiles from that of motion path shapes. The results show that different acceleration profiles can be associated with different types of consonants; in particular, movements with acceleration and deceleration tend to be associated with a class of sounds called obstruents, whereas movements without much acceleration tend to be associated with a class of sounds called sonorants. Moreover, the current experiments show that this sort of cross-modal correspondence arises even when the stimuli are not presented visually, namely, when the participants’ hands were moved passively by a manipulandum. In conclusion, the present study adds an additional piece of evidence demonstrating that bodily action-based information, i.e., proprioception as a very feasible candidate, could lead to sound symbolic patterns.

Analisis Akustik Bunyi Sibilant Bahasa Jepang pada Pembelajar Bahasa Jepang di Indonesia yang Berbahasa Ibu Bahasa Jawa

Abstract&#x0D; This study aims to analyze the characteristics of Japanese sibilant sound observed from the acoustic analysis. The data of this study were in the form of sound samples from 16 respondents who spoke Javanese in Japanese language learners at the university and 8 Japanese native speakers. The respondents were asked to pronounce vocabulary containing Japanese sibilant sounds at the beginning and middle of a total of 72 words which have meaning. Then, the sample of Indonesian and Japanese respondent's sound was measured using Praat software to find their duration, intensity and Center of Gravity (CoG) of the sibilant sound. The measurement results are carried out an analysis of 2 factors, namely consonant type and sound position, using anova statistics. The duration, intensity and Center of Gravity measurement results show that the two factors (consonant type and sound position) are statistically significant. The distribution of sibilant sound duration is from 68 ms to 144 ms, and the distribution of sibilant sound intensity is from 50 dB to 60 dB. The results of the Center of Gravity (CoG) measurements show that among the learners, the CoG values ​​are in the average range of /s/ = 7 kHz, /z/ = 6 kHz, /ɕ/ = 5 kHz, and /ʑ/ = 4 kHz, while among the native speakers, the CoG values ​​are in the average range of /s/ = 8 kHz, /z/ = 8 kHz, /ɕ/ = 6 kHz, and /ʑ/ = 6 kHz.&#x0D; Key words: (a) acoustic analysis, (b) Japanese sibilant, (c) duration, (d) Center of Gravity (CoG)

Hand Gestures Facilitate the Acquisition of Novel Phonemic Contrasts When They Appropriately Mimic Target Phonetic Features.

Purpose Research has shown that observing hand gestures mimicking pitch movements or rhythmic patterns can improve the learning of second language (L2) suprasegmental features. However, less is known about the effects of hand gestures on the learning of novel phonemic contrasts. This study examines (a) whether hand gestures mimicking phonetic features can boost L2 segment learning by naive learners and (b) whether a mismatch between the hand gesture form and the target phonetic feature influences the learning effect. Method Fifty Catalan native speakers undertook a short multimodal training session on two types of Mandarin Chinese consonants (plosives and affricates) in either of two conditions: Gesture and No Gesture. In the Gesture condition, a fist-to-open-hand gesture was used to mimic air burst, while the No Gesture condition included no such use of gestures. Crucially, while the hand gesture appropriately mimicked the air burst produced in plosives, this was not the case for affricates. Before and after training, participants were tested on two tasks, namely, the identification task and the imitation task. Participants' speech output was rated by five Chinese native speakers. Results The perception results showed that training with or without gestures yielded similar degrees of improvement for the identification of aspiration contrasts. By contrast, the production results showed that, while training without gestures did not help improve L2 pronunciation, training with gestures improved pronunciation, but only when the given gestures appropriately mimicked the phonetic properties they represented. Conclusions Results revealed that the efficacy of observing hand gestures on the learning of nonnative phonemes depends on the appropriateness of the form of those gestures relative to the target phonetic features. That is, hand gestures seem to be more useful when they appropriately mimic phonetic features. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13105442.

Language development in children from different SES backgrounds

AbstractThe aim of the study is to analyze prelexical speech development in young children with a different socio-economic status (SES): children from low SES backgrounds (lowSES) are compared with mid-to-high SES (mhSES) children. Timing of the onset of babbling and the consonantal development in consonant-vowel (cv) syllables are investigated. Result show that lowSES children reach the babbling onset milestone significantly later than mhSES children. In addition, they use different consonant types in their cv-syllables: they use more glides, but fewer stops, nasals, fricatives, and liquids. These early differences between children of different backgrounds seem to be in line with the literature on SES differences later on in life.

Featural foot in Bambara

AbstractThe Bambara foot is represented as a rhythmic unit which can be disyllabic or monosyllabic. Foot-parsing is both segmentally and morphologically conditioned. A foot can coincide with a morpheme or be smaller than a morpheme, but it cannot include more than one morpheme. The main factors for foot-parsing are: types of initial consonants, types of internal consonants and vocalic combinations; directionality (left to right) is a secondary factor. Segmentation into feet is relevant for the realization of tone. Disyllabic feet are subdivided into two types, heavy and light; heavy feet have a long vowel in the initial syllable, while light feet have a short vowel in this position which is susceptible to elision (depending on phonotactics). It seems unnecessary to postulate stress in Bambara. The views of previous researchers on the Bambara foot are critically analyzed.

Production Pattern of English C+liquid Clusters by L2 Proficiency of Korean Speakers

The present study investigates the production of English consonant+liquid onset clusters by Korean learners, with a specific focus on vowel insertion. Specifically, this study analyzes whether the production varies according to the type of consonants in onset clusters, i.e., voiceless stop or voiced stop or fricative+/r or l/. Furthermore, the influence of L2 proficiency on the pattern of production of consonant clusters is also examined. The results are as follows: 1) the error rate is higher in C+/l/ than C+/r/; 2) the error rate is higher in voiced stop or fricative+liquid than voiceless stop+liquid; 3) the error rate is significantly higher in fricative+/r/ than voiced stop or voiceless stop+/r/; and 4) the higher a learner’s L2 proficiency, the lower the error frequencies in C+/l/ clusters. In addition, the lower the proficiency, the stronger the [l]-gemination effect on the production of onset clusters. The first result may be due to the L1 transfer, while the second and the third results may be the effect of markedness of the segment itself. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for either the L1 transfer or the markedness effect and patterns in production according to L2 proficiency in consonant+liquid clusters.

Long vowel sounds induce expectations of sweet tastes

A growing body of research has demonstrated the existence of cross modal correspondences that involve tastes and sounds. For example, front vowels (e.g., /i/) and voiceless consonants (e.g., /f/) are more matched with sweetness than back vowels (e.g., /u/) and voiced consonants (e.g., /b/). However, research on taste-sound correspondences so far has focused mainly on the vowel position (e.g., front vs. back) and/or consonant types (i.e., voiced vs. voiceless). The literature on onomatopoeia and phonaesthetics suggests that vowel length (e.g. /e/ in sweeet vs. swee t) can be used to convey pleasure or euphony (e.g. sweetness) and displeasure (e.g., bitterness). This paper explores the linkages between vowel length and taste attributes. Specifically, this paper investigated the link between long (vs. short) vowel sounds and sweetness. In three studies, we demonstrate that people expect words containing long vowels (e.g., Monef [Məʊni:f]) to connote sweeter tastes than words containing short vowels (e.g., Monef [Mɒnef]). Our findings reveal the importance of vowel length in taste-sound associations, and show its linkage with the taste continuum.

Acoustic analysis and detection of pharyngeal fricative in cleft palate speech using correlation of signals in independent frequency bands and octave spectrum prominent peak

BackgroundPharyngeal fricative is one typical compensatory articulation error of cleft palate speech. It passively influences daily communication for people who suffer from it. The automatic detection of pharyngeal fricatives in cleft palate speech can provide information for clinical doctors and speech-language pathologists to aid in diagnosis.ResultsThis paper proposes two features (CSIFs: correlation of signals in independent frequency bands; OSPP: octave spectrum prominent peak) to detect pharyngeal fricative speech. CSIFs feature is proposed to detect the distribution characteristics of frequency components in pharyngeal fricative speech caused by the changed place of articulation and movement of articulators. While OSPP is presented to reflect the concentration degree of prominent peak which is closely related to the place of articulation in pharyngeal fricative, both features are investigated to relate to the altered production process of pharyngeal fricative. To evaluate the capability of these two features to detect pharyngeal fricative, we collected a speech database covering all the types of initial consonants in which pharyngeal fricatives occur. In this detection task, the classifier used to discriminate pharyngeal fricative speech and normal speech is based on ensemble learning.ConclusionThe detection accuracy obtained with CSIFs and OSPP features ranges from 83.5 to 84.5% and from 85 to 87%, respectively. When these two features are combined, the detection accuracy for pharyngeal fricative speech ranges from 88 to 89%, with an AUC (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve) value of 93%.

Nasal consonants, sonority and syllable phonotactics: the dual nasal hypothesis

We investigate the phonotactic behaviour of nasal consonants in a database of over 200 languages. Our findings challenge the common classification of nasals as intermediate between obstruents and liquids on the sonority hierarchy. Instead, we propose that there are two types of nasal consonants, one group with lower sonority than liquids and one with higher sonority. We propose that these two types of nasals differ in the presence or absence of a value for the feature [±continuant].

The Syllable Structure of Gbari

The Gbari syllable structure is attested in literature to be V,N,CV, CNV (CnV and CVÌ´) CNGV, OGNV or ONGV (Hyman and Magaji,1970; Rosendall, 1990) using articulatory and perceptual measures. This work revisits the syllable structure of Gbari language, a Nupoid language of the new Benue Congo phylum, using an added measure- the acoustic parameter, arguing some stand point of the previous researchers. It examines the doubtful segments finding best justifiable interpretations for proper labeling. The 1700 SIL Comparative African Wordlist (SILCAWL) 2006, a Nexton digital audio recorder is used to elicit data from six respondents (two females and four males) of 30-70 age range. Phonological observation and analysis coupled with articulatory, perceptual and acoustic parameters are instrumental in the research. The analysis shows ambiguous and questionable CNV structures: a CCV (with C2 as a palatal nasal consonant, a product of coalescence), a nasally released consonant followed by a vowel (CnV) and a consonant followed by a nasalized vowel (CVÌ´). It is in an attempt to resolve this ambiguity and investigate the status of these structures that the researchers came up with a more validating pattern for the Gbari syllable structure summarized as V, CV and CGV. Where V represents the vowel and the syllabic nasal, CV a consonant (with or without secondary articulation) and a vowel (oral or nasalized); and a CGV (all consonant types realized as a segment followed by a glide and a vowel). Gbari language is rich in phonology and is an interesting area for further research.

Frequency and Acoustic Reduction in English –ment Derivatives

This study investigates the influence of frequency on the production of bimorphemic words, and considers which frequency measure is most apt to explain the differences. Previous studies have reported that frequent words are produced faster andmore casually than infrequent ones, and that medial segments will have shorter durations. The present study examines the relation between frequency and the duration of medial segments in English derived words by conducting a production experiment with 6 native speakers of American English using 74 English -ment derivatives, and pits word frequency, base frequency, and relative frequency (wordfreq basefreq ) against one another as predictors. The results show that models incorporating any of the three frequency measures strongly predict medial segment duration (R2 ≈ 0.56), with the differences in R2 between them on the order of 1%. Among the three frequency measures, whole word frequency explained the most variance, across all consonant types. The duration of segments in highly frequent words tends to be shorter than that in relatively infrequent words. Overall, this study confirms that speakers are sensitive to the extralinguistic information associated with the words such as frequency, and in this case, traditional frequency measures (whole word and base frequencies) are better predictors than relative frequency.

A Study on the Pronunciation Errors of Korean Final double Consonants perceived and spoken by Japanese Korean Leaners

【초록】본 연구의 목적은 일본인 한국어 학습자의 한국어 겹받침 발음에 대한 오류실태를 조사하는 것이다. 이를 위해 두 그룹 일본인 중급 한국어 학습자와 고급 한국어 학습자의 한국어 겹받침 발음의 인식 과제와 말하기 과제를 실시하였다. 실험 결과는 일본인 한국어 학습자 두 그룹이 모두 한국어 모어 화자와 비교하여 올바르게 겹받침 발음을 인식하지 못하고 또 발음을 할 수 없음을 보여주었다. 따라서 일본인 학습자를 위한 한국어 겹받침 발음 교육을 강화시킬 필요가 있다고 할 수 있다. 본 연구는 일본인 학습자의 한국어 겹받침 발음을 위한 교수법을 마련하는 데에 기초 자료가 될 것이며, 일본인 학습자를 위한 한국어 발음 교육에 기여할 수 있을 것이다.This paper aims to investigate error types of the Korean final double consonants perceived and spoken by Japanese Korean leaners. The experiment was conducted on both perception and pronunciation of Korean final consonants by both Japanese intermediate and advanced korean leaners. As a result, The experiment showed that both Japanese Korean learners’ groups were not capable of perceiving and speaking them properly compared to Korean native speakers. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the teaching of pronunciation of Korean final double consonants for Japanese learners. This study will be helpful for preparing a teaching method for the pronunciation of final double consonants and make a contribution to the teaching of Korean pronunciation for Japanese learners.

Which Plosive Consonant Is More Useful for the Aerodynamic Analysis of Pathologic Voice?

Objectives.Both acoustic and aerodynamic analyses are essential to evaluate the phonetic characteristics of voice pathology. The purpose of the study is to determine the magnitude of their correlation with the different types of bilabial plosive consonants.Methods.A controlled prospective study of 35 patients diagnosed with unilateral vocal fold paralysis was performed. The sustained vowel /a/ and bilabial voiceless consonants were used. Three common acoustic parameters were measured from a sustained vowel /a/ and aerodynamic parameters from a set of syllables /pi/, /phi/, and /p’i/. We determined the correlation coefficients between acoustic and aerodynamic measurements for the bilabial plosive consonants /pi/, /phi/, and /p’i/.Results.The mean values of acoustic parameters were higher than the thresholds of pathology. The mean values of aerodynamic parameters varied according to the types of consonants. The correlation between acoustic and aerodynamic parameters was significantly larger with the consonant /phi/ compared with the consonants /p’/ and /p/. The magnitudes of correlation were higher with the consonant /phi/ compared with the consonants /p’/ and /p/.Conclusion.The plosive consonant /phi/ may represent a more valuable investigative consonant than the consonants /p/ or /p’/ for aerodynamic analysis of voice pathology, especially in patients with unilateral vocal fold paralysis.

Consonant strengthening: A crosslinguistic survey and articulatory proposal

AbstractGiven the common intuition that consonant lenition occurs more often than fortition, we formulate this as a hypothesis, defining these sound change types in terms of decrease or increase in oral constriction. We then test the hypothesis on allophonic processes in a diverse sample of 81 languages. With the hypothesis confirmed, we examine the input and output of such sound changes in terms of manner and place of articulation and find that while decrease in oral constriction (weakening) affects most consonant types, increase in oral constriction (strengthening) is largely restricted to palatal and labial glides. We conclude that strengthening does not appear to be the simple inverse of weakening. In conclusion we suggest some possible avenues for explaining how glide strengthening may result from articulatory production pressures and speculate that strengthening and weakening can be encompassed under a single theory of sound change resulting from the automatization of production.